The wind of French student protests has reached Belgium. And it smells like tear gas and burning cars in the center of Brussels. Where thousands of young people and very young people took to the streets to protest against the degradation of schools and teaching.
Claims similar to those of their French peers, who in the streets of the European capital mixed with the procession organized by left-wing trade unions against the austerity policies of the government supported by the centre-right coalition nicknamed ‘Arizona’. A long snake of around 50 thousand people – according to the organizers’ figures – crossed the city. With a peaceful and unionized head, and a tail largely participated by students and ready to engage in physical confrontation with the police. It flared up from the very first bars and continued for hours. Immediately after the speeches from the stage in the central Place de l’Albertine, the unions opened the march.
Alongside the markedly left-wing FGBT, there is the CSC, of Christian-moderate tradition. Further back, several radical left collectives and some acronyms of the social opposition to the government. After all, thousands of students, the true protagonists of the day. Most of them marched peacefully with the rest of the procession, holding up banners and chanting ‘we are all anti-fascists’. But behind the lines, several hundred very young people unleashed an urban guerrilla war that set the center of the Belgian capital on fire. Already in Gare Centrale, at the start of the procession, the students attacked the police with their faces covered, throwing stones and firecrackers, building barricades with bikes and construction material set on fire. The police responded by making extensive use of the water cannon and firing tear gas.
Similar, and even more violent, scenes also occurred at the end of the procession at Gare du Midi, the city’s main station. Held in check for over three hours by hooded students, accompanied by some of the most extreme fringes of the march. At the end of the riots, a few hundred ‘casseurs’ targeted several vehicles, setting fire to some cars and destroying three buses. The provisional toll is around twenty arrests, including many minors. While the authorities underline a slowdown in the protests in France, where 141 schools remained closed today, many in the Belgian demonstration spoke of a “French spark” capable of rekindling the demands that some teachers’ collectives had already taken to the streets at the end of the last school year. After the riots in Liège in recent days, student protests have landed in the capital and do not seem destined to abate. With some sensitive events already scheduled, including the environmentalist march on Sunday and a new public sector strike on Monday.